Dennis Lee “Pepper” Walling is a firefighter with the Morehead VFD (KY) and been involved with the Montgomery County FD and Rowan County EMS as well. He is a well traveled firefighter as well. He worked as a firefighter in Iraq around 2008. I am actually friends with him on Facebook, but I am not sure we have ever met in person.

Basically, Dennis Walling was arrested at the airport for having 3 kilos of cocaine in his possession. He was in Ecuador for a job interview with AirServ. It was apparently a scam. He is still in prison, and will be until May 21st when he will be before a judge for his crime. From there, if convicted, he could serve years in prison.

Friends and fellow firefighters have come out saying there is NO possibility that Dennis intentionally tried to traffic the drugs. He was supposed to be in Ecuador for 2 weeks and then they were going to send him to the UK (according to his FB page).

Yes, this story is hard to believe. However, it is harder to believe that this guy was in on the drug trafficking. Read on.

The Morehead News contacted the U. S. State Department about the Walling case and received this statement from an official source:

“The Department of State is aware of the arrest of U.S. citizen Dennis Walling on April 20 in Quito, Ecuador. The U.S. Embassy in Quito is providing consular assistance to Mr. Walling and has urged Ecuadorean officials to provide appropriate medical care as long as he is in their custody.” (read more)